A fly falls into your favourite and very expensive drink. Do you scoop it out, drown it or discard the drink?
Link to share this article and the one hour radio talk with Sue and Zulakha on IFM January 2023
The common housefly as a vector as well as a cure for disease
Preventive medicine and immunology from houseflies – according to Muslim teachings
Radio IFM interview with Zulaikha and Sue Visser on Women of worth. WOW!
Link for 1 hr talk: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g8C_ShVsTkUh0evdZnsje2-9APXQIy7K/view
First, here is some background to the Islamic guidelines from the Hadith:
Sunnah refers to those actions of the Prophet (peace be upon Him), which the Prophet (PBUH) initiated or were performed by His Companions. They were narrated to the next generation and then compiled in what we call Hadith collections. Apart from the Koran, they constitute the major source of guidance for Islamic people.
Q: What is mentioned about flies in the Hadith?
1,400 years ago: “If a fly falls into one of your containers [of food or drink], immerse it completely before removing it, for under one of its wings there is venom and under another there is its antidote.
The Hadith states that g.when the fly falls, it dips its poisonous wing into the food and since the other wing is out of the food, the cure (antidote) remains in it. When the whole fly is submerged, the antidote remaining in the other wing also passes into the food, removing the harm given by the other wing.
Q: This concept is disturbing for most people. Sue, would you follow this advice?
Recently experiments have been done under supervision which can prove that a fly carries the disease (pathogens) plus the antidote. Ordinarily when a fly touches food or drink it infects the liquid with its pathogens, so it must be dipped in order to release also the antidote for those pathogens to act as a counterbalance and thus prevent infection.
Logically speaking, if the fly did not carry some sort of protection in the form of an antidote or immunity, it would perish from its own poisonous burden and there would be no fly left in the world. You can find plenty of scientific evidence of bacterial pathogen-suppressing micro-organisms living in houseflies. Thanks to google, we have all this information at our fingertips. However, I am also wary about a 100% guarantee that all the antidotes are present and active. Anyhow, I did not remove a fly from my glass of water. I submerged the poor thing and when it had completely drowned, I removed it and drank it all. It felt creepy, but who are we to judge what the Prophet (PBUH) tells us to do? Obviously, this was common practice at the time!
Q: What does modern science have to say about this unusual phenomenon?
www.muslimtents.com/aminahsworld/Hadiths_of_the_fly.html
Flies carry and spread diseases but they also carry cells in their gut (not wings) that can cure diseases. The fly microbiota were described as “longitudinal yeast cells living as parasites inside their bellies. These yeast cells, in order to perpetuate their life cycle, protrude through certain respiratory tubules of the fly. If the fly is dipped in a liquid, the cells burst into the fluid and the content of those cells is an antidote for the pathogens which the fly carries.”
There is no science without experimentation! They tested ten bacterial cultures from samples of sterilized fluid into which a fly fell without being immersed; ten more bacterial cultures from samples into which a fly fell and was then taken out; ten more from samples into which the fly was immersed twice; and ten more from samples into which the fly was immersed three times. The results showed that bacterial colonies thrived in the first set but were stunted and depleted in the second, more so in the third, and most in the fourth set.
Q: Are flies used medicinally in other ways?
Fly larvae, or maggots, are used medicinally to clean up festering wounds. These little white worms only eat dead tissue and leave the healthy tissue alone. They are especially bred under clinical circumstances and are kept free of germs!
Where do flies come from pic This is the link for the PDF
